About Azalea Avenue:
After nine years of abuse, Rosemary finally decides to leave Don. But her plans of escape are interrupted, first by Don coming home early from a weekend hunting trip and then by the appearance of a flying saucer from outer space in the sky above Shady Groves…
This is a novelette of 10400 words or approx. 38 pages in the The Day the Saucers Came… series, but may be read as a standalone.
Content warning for domestic violence.
Excerpt:
June 9th, 1956. Oh, I remember that day well. After all, that was the day that I decided to stop being a victim and become a survivor instead. It was the day that I finally decided to take my life into my own hands.
I’d gotten married at twenty-one, just after college. I’d been working as a secretary at G + M Aeronautics for only six weeks, when I met him. Donald F. Wilson, just back from the Pacific and discharged from the Marines, whereupon he’d gone to work as an engineer for G + M. He was dashing, handsome, attentive, had a good job and good prospects. In short, he was everything I’d ever wanted in a man, everything I’d been told I should want.
It was love at first sight, a true whirlwind courtship. Within three weeks we were engaged, within three months we were married.
Directly after the wedding, I quit my job at G + M. I argued at first, after all we could have used the money. But Donald was adamant that he didn’t want me working. He said having his wife work would make him feel like a failure as a man.
And since I loved him and didn’t want him to feel like a failure, I quit and devoted myself to turning our house on Azalea Avenue in the brand-new subdivision of Shady Groves into a proper home. I cooked and cleaned and baked and knitted and waved Donald good-bye, as a took off to his job at G + M every morning in his brand-new Ford Country Squire.
I spent the first two months of our marriage polishing everything in our new home to a perfect sheen and trying out every recipe in Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book. And Don was the perfect husband, he praised my cleaning and my cooking and showered me with flowers and gifts. And when I found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t have been happier.
Truly, I was living the American dream. But like so many dreams, it quickly turned into a nightmare.
I was six months pregnant the first time he hit me. I had felt listless and sick all day, hampered by my ever expanding belly. And because I was sick, I didn’t hear the kitchen timer go off and accidentally burned the tuna casserole.
It wasn’t badly burned, just a little bit crispy around the edges. But Don was furious. He took one look at the charred casserole, screamed at me that I was hopeless and useless. Then he slapped me across the face, so hard that I stumbled and fell.
I lay there on the black and white tiled floor of my brand-new kitchen in Shady Groves, my arms wrapped around my belly, terrified that my baby was hurt, and looked up at Don, the man I’d married, the man I barely recognised.
Don apologised at once. He told me that he didn’t know what had come over him, that he’d had a hard day at work and that he’d been looking forward to a good home-cooked meal. And when the meal turned out burned, he just lost it.
He helped me up and even drove me to the hospital to check if everything was all right with the baby. When the duty nurse asked me what had happened, Don told her I’d accidentally slipped on the floor. And the nurse — a veteran in her fifties who’d probably seen more pain than most of us will in a lifetime — gave me that strange, sad look and said, “Well, if you say so, ma’am.”
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About Cora Buhlert:
Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. She is the author of the Silencer series of pulp style thrillers, the Shattered Empire space opera series, the In Love and War science fiction romance series, the Helen Shepherd Mysteries and plenty of standalone stories in multiple genres.
When Cora is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher. She also runs the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene and contributes to the Hugo-nominated fanzine Galactic Journey. Cora is a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award.
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